


give thanks to the navigator

by bessemerprocess



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, Jossed, Kat and Amanda's pan-galactic roadtrip, bar brawl, rant in the notes, the first search for spock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 14:30:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17706026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/pseuds/bessemerprocess
Summary: Kat has no idea how she’s gotten involved in this disaster. Well, no, that’s a lie, she knows exactly how she got dragged into this, and she’s laying that blame squarely at Sarek’s feet.





	give thanks to the navigator

**Author's Note:**

> So I started this between seasons based on the trailers, and my deep desire for Amanda and Kat to road trip across the universe. Its got jossed basically immediately, and so it didn't get continued past this one bit that I loved. 
> 
> I also am a hard core proponent of the soft canon birthdate for Amanda (2202), which means she and Kat are approximately the same age. The 2210 birth date would mean that when Sarek was 65 he married an 18/19 year old and got her pregnant almost immediately, and as much as I side eye all of Sarek's life choices, I just can't with that, so 2202 it is.

Kat has no idea how she’s gotten involved in this disaster. Well, no, that’s a lie, she knows exactly how she got dragged into this, and she’s laying that blame squarely at Sarek’s feet. 

Oh, he wasn’t the one who had shown up at Starfleet Headquarters, drenched but determined. That had been his wife. But still, it’s the Vulcan’s fault. 

Amanda Grayson had floated into Kat’s office, still dripping. The water just made the diaphanous layers of her hybrid Vulcan gown seem more otherworldly against the sterile blandness of Starfleet HQ. Kat had always pictured Amanda in tweed jackets and hair twisted around pens. Maybe even some horn rimmed glasses. She’s going to blame that on the significant amount of assigned articles from her linguistics classes at the Academy with Dr. Grayson's name on them, but the cognitive dissonance it causes is striking. 

“I need your help,” Amanda said, “my son is missing.”

Kat had replied, “Okay,” without even thinking about it, because of course Sarek’s son is missing, of course his daughter is traumatized, and of course Kat is going to have to deal with it. 

Amanda Grayson might seem demur and a bit ethereal, like someone returned from an elf mound after years spent dancing with the fey, but she’s steel through and through. Not that Vulcan is elfland, though anyone one who had watched Amanda and Sarek’s wedding on the vids might be excused for thinking otherwise. Worse, Amanda’s spent her entire adult life getting stubborn Vulcans, academics, and even worse, Vulcan academics, to bend to her will. Really, Kat never stood a chance. 

Of course, when one of the spouses of the Ambassadors of the big four show up in your office desperate to find their missing child, who is also a member of your chain of command, well, it's not like Amanda really even had to try that hard. 

Especially now, with the complicate web of duty and debt she owes to the House of Sarek, and the friction between her and Christopher Pike. In another universe, in a better universe, she wouldn’t know who Chris Pike was beyond another captain in the fleet they both served. But Pike has always been one of George Kirk’s proteges, and Gabriel and George had served as the up and coming golden boys of their individual Starfleet factions for longer than Kat can remember, with all the back room politics and barroom dust ups that entails. And so Kat doesn’t trust him to find his own science officer, let alone when he’s being evasive about the whole thing.

Which is how Fleet Admiral Cornwell is currently under fire from an angry Tellurite in the middle of a dock brawl on a dilapidated mining station on the edge of the quadrant, with Amanda Grayson cursing loudly across the corridor when she should be sitting behind her desk tending to the bureaucratic administrivia that keeps Starfleet running. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Amanda growls as she peeks out from cover and has to duck under a phaser beam and back to the precarious safety of a cargo barrel. Vulcans may not curse, but their human wives sure could show up even a Tellarite longshoreman. 

No, there's no boring desk work for Kat. Instead she’s skulking across the universe, getting shot at, while her legion of assistants tell people she’s busy in hush hush negotiations of some sort. She’s sure Lt. Byrnes will have her memorize a cover story backward and forward, and probably upside down when she reappears. 

But right now, there’s a Tellurite with a phaser, a swarm of intoxicated Andorrans, and what she thinks might be a Betazoid bachelor party, all trashing the dockside bar Kat and Amanda had been meeting a contact at. 

Said Tellrite, Givet lek Xav, is, as far as Kat’s ability to determine, the captain of a intersystem cargo hauler, mainly bringing in ice for the the station’s water stores. She’s loud, brash, and station security has had her in the brig seven times for bar fights. And somehow she knows where S’chn T’gai Spock, son of Sarek, son of Skon, and pointy ear pain in Kat’s ass is. 

Givet is sitting with her feet up on the chair next to her, sipping a glass of water, when they enter the bar. 

“Did you know that traditionally on both Tellar Prime and Vulcan, only women may own water?” Amanda asks, and in that instance Kat knows exactly what Sarek sees in her. “For cultures with such diametrically opposed views on emotion, the cultural similarities caused by the scarcity of water on both planets are intriguing.”

Maybe when she has time, in that other life she’s going to live when she has built Starfleet back up enough to retire, Kat will delve into xenopsychology and cultural anthropology, but at the moment, she just gives Amanda a look.

Amanda smirks back.

The deep hood of Amanda’s outfit is supposed to keep them from being identified, not that Kat had thought anyone on this station probably cared much about the Federation’s foremost xenolinguist. Of course such a garment required that the wear keep her damn mouth shut, and Kat is kicking herself for not seeing exactly how this was going to play out. She’s knows Sarek and has met Michael, of course Amanda is going to open her mouth.

“Captain,” Kat says, and Amanda interupts her before she can get any further.

“I hear you have information about the whereabouts of Lt. Spock.”

The Tellarite peers under her hood, and then wrinkles her face up in disgust before throwing back the rest of her water and slamming the cup back down on the table.

“Amanda Grayson, defiler of our sacred tongue, mother of Michael the betrayer, mother of Spock, cursed be his name, and the name of his house, and all who speak his name!” the Tellurite yelled, pushing away from the table and drawing a phaser at the same time. 

Kat expected the insults, Givet is a Tellarite after all, and a hearty insult is the standard greeting on Tellar Prime, but not the phaser. 

“You know, usually people lead with Sarek when they want to insult me. I’m impressed that you are so offended by the Universal Translator that you would forget him,” Amanda says, seemingly headless of the danger.

“Ma’am,” Kat manages to get out as she drags Amanda behind her, which doesn’t stop Amanda from talking. Except, Amanda bumps into a far too curious Andorian, and the Andorian stumbles into a drunken Orion, and suddenly fists are flying and phasers are shooting and it's a Marx brothers comedy with extra weapons all around. 

“I suspect Spock preceded us,” Amanda yells, as she ducked back behind her barrel. 

“Why is it that phaser fire greets us everywhere Spock’s been?” Kat calls back, as she pops out from her cover to fire back. “I’m beginning to suspect it’s a family trait.”

“Just wait until you meet Sybok,” Amanda says with a grin, as Kat finally manages to stun Givet.

The falling Tellarite hits the deck, but now the Orion has a phaser out too, and he’s shooting at the Andorians, who are throwing beer steins right back. 

Amanda takes the moment to check Givet’s pockets and hold up a data stick like a prize, before scurrying across to Kat’s cover while no one is shooting at them. 

“I think we’d rather not be here when station security arrives,” Amanda says. 

Kat represses her instinctual eye roll, and instead points to the door that leads to a service corridor. “Through the door, and down the hall 500 meters, and we should be able to avoid most of the fighting. 

The brawl has grown to encompass the entire docks, but no one else seems intent on shooting them, more interested in older feuds then two women no longer actively fighting, and so they make a run for the door, and reach the service corridor without a problem. 

“You take me to the nicest places,” Kat says, as they trip through the threshold to their shuttle. 

“Just wait, my next lead spotted Spock on a waste reclamation satellite,” Amanda says.

“You know I hate you right now, right?” Kat replies.

“I love you, too,” Amanda grins back, as she slides into the pilot’s seat and tells the computer to take them out of the system.


End file.
